h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Oh, and my husband refers to "Delia Smith's Christmas" as Delia Smith's Complete Bankruptcy Course ...

Mol

All help much appreciated. I continue my investigations. There is indeed a somewhat bewildering array of books out there as my visit to Borders proved at lunchtime today.

D'you know? I've never actually bought a cookery book?

I've occasionally looked something up in Delia (my mum's, so only available when I visit the parents), and have used BBC/food from time to time. I've also had books bought for me, but rarely ones that are any good for actually following a recipe.

I have spent a fair amount of time watching ready steady cook and simlar programmes, though.

I tend to just let ideas seep into my mind by some form of osmosis. The only time I've looked up, and followed, a recipe recetly has been to make a cake, as I think weighing out quantities is a bit more important for baking.

RF

Oh yeah, and I'm a rubbish

I would agree with Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course as a great all rounder. Also any of Nigel Slaters books...fast, quick (and really tasty) food but can be a bit more expensive.

Darina Allen - The Ballymaloe Cookery course.

Bit pricey £25ish, but absolutely fantastic...from the basics through to obscure technical dishes via all the favourites many with a bit of a twist presented in clear no nonsense English - excellent

I'd recommend buying a book called "Practical cookery" published by Hodder something or other.

I brought a copy recently as a friend (trained professional chef) used an earlier edition of the book to get qualified with. Not cheap but covers everything you will need up to, and including, becoming a qualified chef.

Do you mean Practical Cookery by Victor Ceserani, David Foskett, and Ronald Kinton?

Publisher: Hodder Arnold (28 May 2004)
ISBN: 0340811471

RF

That sounds just like what I was thinking of.

The River Cottage Meat Book, by Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall (sp?). It is easily the best of the 50-odd cookbooks I've amassed over the years. My skills have improved no end since I got that. It covers absolutely everything. And real recipes, not the pseudo-party-menu-simplified-for-amateurs tripe you get in most cookbooks.

Only real disadvantage is that it's all about meat - obviously - bit great for veggies but it does cover accompaniments, sauces etc.

Practical Cookery was one of the books we used at Bournemouth and Poole Technical. Learned some of my best cooking skills at the college.

Where did Hodder Arnold come out of? The 0 340 ISBN is owned by Hodder and Stoughton. (I have a Coronet book on the system with the ISBN 0340027134, though, so they must be related too.) And then there's 0340043598 which is published by Hodder Paperbacks Ltd. It's all a mess, a mess, I tell you!

TRiG.

> Where did Hodder Arnold come out of? <<

Beats me, I just copied and pasted from amazon.

RF

Well, I'm currently at work (well...) at the school library, where I'm cataloguing books. I recognised 0 340, but I knew I'd never heard of Hodder Arnold.

Now, I couldn't have told you off hand who owns 0 340 (it's not like 0 14, which is the Penguin Group, or 0 19 which is the OUP), but I knew it was a well-known publisher. I've come across a lot of 0 340s.

(And I could have told you that 0 14 was Penguin well before I started working in libraries. Before secondary school, I think. I read small print.)

TRiG.

You saddo TRiG although, many years ago i used to be able to tell you the dialling codes of most of the UK

Back on topic, Delia! Defiantely Delia, "Oh, that mixture doesn't look quite right, I'll add a bit more flour"

My student cookbook was a copy of "The Student Cookbook" that I picked up on Amazon for a few quid, but I mislaid that. It had a few decent cheap recipies in though.
I will admit that in times of emergency I have been forced to send messages to Master B. If he ever produced a cookbook that'd be worth a look

Delia really annoys me. I find her recipes very uninspiring to cook or eat. Having said that it is probably one of the best to learn from because her books have absolutely everything in them. If I was buying a single cookbook to use, it would probably have to be a Delia. A better thing to do would be to have lots of cookbooks though.

The first cookbook I bought (as a student) was the River Cafe Cookbook. I can heartily recommend that you don't make this book your first purchase. Making pasta dishes is quite a good thing to do as a student though, and I can highly recommend Marcella Hazan's book called (IIRC) Italian Cookery.